Hello,
I have decieded to upgrade from my Dell D600 Latitude to a better computer. Instead of looking for a good one to buy I have decided to build my own (or buy a used one to upgrade - not sure yet).
My question is, What would I need in order to run blender fast?
I want to be able to use Cycles, cammera track with ease, use photoshop, unity, and any other program or render engine I may get in future years. I’ve already done some research, but I would like to hear some fresh ideas. Maybe some of you have already gone through this process.
Thanks for any help or small tips you may offer.
J
Minimum 8GB of RAM, an SSD, Nvidia GTX 5xx or higher, dual screens, as high-end a CPU as possible.
And on the OS side, Blender tends to run faster on linux because of the compilers used. But since you’ll be using PS you’d probably want Win7/8. Though you could always dual boot with linux
8GB will work pretty well but since RAM is among the cheapest parts in a pc these days I think you should aim for 16GB or more. I use an SSD to boot from but it won’t really speed up actual use of Blender much. I never understand why people are so insistent about dual screen setups for Blender. I use just one monitor for professional use and another hooked up to my dedicated render pcs. For Cycles GPU rendering definitely aim for either a GTX 570/580 or 670/680 with as much VRAM as possible (the 5xx series are slightly quicker but the 6xx have more VRAM available -up to 4GB- and are more power efficient). For your main production machine I would suggest using two GPUs (not in SLI) - that way you can assign one to render while you work on other things or toggle both to render for extra speed. I use an i7-960 (getting old) on my main machine but it still works plenty fast since I mostly use Cycles GPU rendering. Obviously a better CPU will serve better for things like large physics/ fluid sims and detailed sculpting.
I definitely recommend Windows 7 x64 (Professional if you want to use more than 16GB RAM) for its compatibility with, well, everything. I have seen some problems with performance on Win 8 with Blender (sure it will get worked out in time but for me it is a no go). I love Linux but hate it for professional work since it is a pain (at least for me) to keep programs like Blender up to date and make sure everything keeps working between system updates.
